The Road To A Recyclable Laptop

Most laptop users wouldn't dream of trying to recycle their computer by themselves when its useful life is over. But a group of mechanical engineering students at Stanford University and Finland's Aalto University spent nine months designing a prototype laptop that is fully recyclable in two minutes, via 10 easy steps—no screwdriver required. Design software giant Autodesk just named the team of graduate students inventor of the month for October.

The Bloom Laptop project was a class project for a course in design methodology. Students were asked to design a recyclable consumer electronics product that was engaging and simple for consumers. The ultimate goal is to decrease the amount of electronic waste that ends up in landfills every year. Roughly 2 million tons of electronics became obsolete in the U.S. in 2005, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But less than 380,000 tons of electronics were recycled; the rest ended up in landfills. Autodesk sponsored the Stanford course as part of a larger effort to encourage students to pursue degrees and careers in engineering. Autodesk is also working to help the manufacturing industry understand how to implement sustainable practices.

One of the first things the students learned, through extensive consumer research on the Stanford campus and outside of Bay Area stores like Safeway and Trader Joe's, is that people are put off by having to take an extra step in order to recycle anything. "The second someone has to pick up a screwdriver, the game is over," says Aaron Engel-Hall, one of the Stanford students who worked on the project. "We had to make recycling so easy that users could do it with no tools in 45 seconds."

The design team came up with a laptop that uses latches instead of screws. The bottom opens up, the top slides off and you can pull out the components. The LCD screen, the motherboard and the keyboard contain metals and silica and plastic that are difficult to recycle. To handle that, the team placed an envelope on the back of the computer screen that is pre-paid and addressed to the nearest facility that can recycle those three elements. The remaining case was designed to be made of aluminum, which is eco-friendly, can be recycled in most cities' home-pickup recycling programs. (Due to time and money constraints the team used 3D printing to make a case from plastic.) For a video showing how the laptop comes apart, click here

To create the laptop, Engel-Hall and his teammates bought some HP laptops and Macbooks and harvested their guts. They used batteries from cellphones and the motherboard from the Macbook. The bulk of their time was spent on designing the screw-free case. "There are many ways to make a device that comes apart without tools. We wanted it to be so easy that people didn’t get confused," says Engel-Hall.

The students from Finland visited Stanford three times and the Stanford students went to Finland once. They took advantage of the time difference between California and Finland and held conference calls before the Stanford students went to sleep so the Aalto University students could pick up where the Californians left off.

The team received an A for the Bloom Laptop project but so far hasn't gotten any bites from PC makers like Dell or HP.